Oh RomanGod, you're still super pessimistic about everything? Even after a successful Simulcast expanded from just FUNimation to now include Crunchyroll? Even after we got the entire pre-timeskip portion of the series on DVD here in the states? Even when One Piece has a TV deal on the revived Toonami? Even after the fact that a theatrical release for Film Gold happened AT ALL after how poorly Movie 8 did?…
Wow you're a supremely negative person you know that? Like wow.
Ok, I know it won't change anything since you're just dead set that anything less than Dragon Ball Z levels of success means doom for One Piece in the states, but this gave me incentive to look into it and the info I just found about the Box Office for the movie is interesting, so I figure I'll share it since I'm sure some folks out there will find it interesting too.
Top 10 Highest Grossing films released by FUNimation Films.
1 Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' - $8,008,363
1.5* Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods - $2,553,002
2 Shin Godzilla - $1,918,403
3 The Boy and the Beast - $490,643
4 Attack on Titan: Part 1 - $449,523
5 Attack on Titan: Part 2 - $305,934
6 One Piece Film: Gold - $164,409
7 Psycho-Pass: The Movie - $138,366
8 Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie - $101,203
9 Rurouni Kenshin: Origins - $32,445
10 Project Itoh - Harmony - $23,248*FUNimation had a partner in distributing Battle of Gods, so the number of theaters it's in and the breakdown of who got what in terms of the profits are different. It's included for scale, but FUNi would have made less on that than they made on Shin Godzilla for example since they distributed that alone and thus would have had to share the profits with nobody.
"Wait" I hear you saying. "I don't see Movie 8 on that list, how did that do?"…. The answer is: Abysmal.
First, it's like Battle of Gods in that FUNi wasn't the primary distributor so didn't get all the profits, but.... the movie made.... $6,587...... yes, six Thousand. as in, less than the estimated 10,000 it costs them to dub one EPISODE of the show..... that's pretty damn bad.
But onto the important part: How did Film Gold do?.... well, we don’t fully know yet, see Every single other movie on the list is the box office of the ENTIRE run of the movie…. Film Gold’s numbers come entirely from the first DAY. Yeah, I checked Box Office Mojo and we still don’t have numbers from Wednesday so we can’t yet say how big the drop off is.
That being said tho, the one day we do have can tell us some things. First, it’s a Tuesday. The movie didn’t open on the weekend, and there IS one full weekend during the run of the film. More people tend to be free and therefore tend to go to the movies on Weekends, so it makes sense that we can expect those days to be a decent addition to the box office.
Raw numbers tho, it’s not bad AT ALL that One Piece, in its first day, ranked as #6 on FUNi’s highest grossing films.
I think hanging out with the Adult Swim Message Board members have made me overly pessimistic because they're always making fun of OP's lack of popularity in the states. But…. I didn't even think it did bad when I first heard the news. But I swear, no matter what, someone somewhere always brings up One Piece apparently not having popularity in the states. Like this tweet. Why does it exist? If One Piece is such in a good spot, why do I keep encountering people always bringing up it's "lack of popularity". It's not like I'm the one who always starts that conversation. It's always because I notice something, usually something someone says, it concerns me - so I speak my piece. I don't see this happen with any other anime, questioning it's success that is - but I constantly run into people doing that with One Piece... so it just makes me confused as to how to really take it's "success" and if it's really "success" or just it "doing adequately enough to keep airing".
Furthermore, it's hard to believe certain people here because they ARE overly optimistic. Case in point, back when One Piece had an earlier timeslot, many people here said that it was doing great that the viewer drop-off from the previous show doesn't mean anything. And sure enough, One Piece was then regulated to 2:30am as the last premiere of the block, with the head of the block, Jason Demarco, even ADMITTING that they'd had to constantly bat for One Piece to stay on air. Honestly, I'd say the Toonami's crew love of the series is whats keeping it on tv (and also that you don't need to do partically well at 2:30am to stay on) As long as it doesn't completely bomb, the higher-ups should be fine with keeping it. But that's nothing to be proud of.
Just seems to be a OP thing. A good deal of people don't seem to believe in it. I never see people talking about such things with Naruto, or Attack on Titan, or basically any other shonen series. Obviously DBZ is in a league of it's own, so I'm not including that.